"phaeton" > wrote in message
...


> I don't know if it is new math or not. I hated math in school, and
> didn't participate. I got through all my math classes with the
> minimum effort necessary to get a passing D.
>
I didn't even get that. I got pregnant at 16 and quit school to get
married. At least I got a GED, and it was before my class graduated. I
always cut algebra.

> Reality comes fast, hard and cold when you enter college some 18 years
> later.

That's close for me. About 20 years after high school.

All the stuff I should have learned in HS I had to learn last
> year in a college algebra course.

I failed so miserably in the math placement test that I had to start with
beginner algebra. I looked at the placement test problems and it made no
sense to me. I didn't study ahead of time. I wanted to test knowing what I
know now. Well, that was nothing.

Grades 7-12 compressed into 15
> weeks. Make no mistake, that class beat me to a bloody pulp. We would
> be assigned one section out of ten per 'module' as homework. I would
> do all ten. And then once a week I would go back and do one or two
> sections from previous chapters all over again.

For my last algebra class I only did the bare minimum to pass the
conferences and homework. I rarely studied. I bombed on the final exam and
ended up with a C. Back in high school I would have been fine with that,
but since I've gone back to college my GPA is very close to 4 and that class
brought me down. So this one, I am taking more seriously. Then I get to do
college algebra in the spring. oy.

My instructor, a very
> amusing guy from Senegal, gave me a BC in the class because he could
> see how much effort I was putting into it and he knew that I'm not
> going to be an engineer. If you were to go by exams and test scores,
> I'm pretty sure I would have done no better than a D. So that
> sequence I just showed you to solve for x is something that I learned
> how to do for the first time at age 35.
>
> "I'm too old for this"
>
> I had that thought a few times, but I was persistent in wanting to
> prove that I'm not an idiot. I wanted to show that I could do this. I
> kept my algebra book and I plan to keep practicing, and then take the
> class over again. Masochism? Perhaps.
>
> Good luck.

Thank you. I had to do this for several reasons. The most important one
was for me.